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Just get those babies in the box and start selling them! I want mine now!

and my g5 will slowly become old and obselite :'(

Andy yur g5 is already obsolite

Ahhh yes...we haven't heard about 'Leopard' in a while...hmmm, maybe a release to coincide with astalaVista...but then again, maybe Apple can't wait that long.

Isn't Conroe a 64-bit processor? Or is it Merom? Having trouble keeping these straight.
Bottom line, does anyone know if the Intel-based Power Macs will still provide 64-bit processing?
Thanks!

The current quad cored G5 is faster than pretty much any other desktop computer. The new intel chips are going to need to be hella-fast to beat it.

I'm interested in a less expensive refurb Quad for my next computer later this year. It will be quite a while before I switch my desktop to an intel machine. My laptop is a different story. That's getting switched on tax free weekend in August.

The current Quad should have the beating of Conroe.
I have been holding off buying the quad just in case conroe was going to be bitching but 40% improvement over current dual core pentiums is not earth shattering.

Merom and Conroe are both 64bit laptop and desktop respectively.

The interesting thing about these processors is the virtualisation technology that Leopard might take advantage of.

BTW I am switching from PC not because I am worried about virii or that I loathe M$ I think the Quad is the best value workstation around at the moment. I priced up a comparative PC and it came out far more expensive than the quad. Who would have guessed!

astalaVista
LOL please tell me you're from a square state. There's definitely an h in hasta la vista.

Merom is the 64 bit notebook processor. Conroe is the 64 bit desktop. Both are based on the new core microarchitecture, as is Yonah aka core solo and core duo.

I agree that they will have to be hella fast to beat the quad core G5, but I think they will do it because conroe chips will be a generation or two ahead of the G5's depending on how you look at it. It is the forefront of intel's progress while the G5 is quite a ways behind the best technology IBM is making. IBM designs for servers and then tailors the chips for desktops later, which is what makes them so awesome in the high end. Intel's design philosophy is now notebook based, as shown by the Core architecture coming out in Yonah first, and that Conroe (desktop) is based on Merom (laptop) processor. I think this is why the notebook and low end desktop intel macs will improve drastically while the high end will only get a boost by moving from the 5 year old technology of POWER4 to the brand new tech of Core. If Apple had stuck with IBM long enough to bring the advancements of subsequent POWER generations, 5 looks like it was pretty significant, to the apple desktop we could have seen some very great things.

OBSOLETE. I hope those of you who can't spell are not native English speakers.

JohnE writes: “Ahhh yes...we haven't heard about 'Leopard' in a while...hmmm, maybe a release to coincide with astalaVista...but then again, maybe Apple can't wait that long.”

You are right on the money with that one!

Fat Mac,
On the high end Apple has always been a far better value, because that is what they were designed for. They never did a good job of dumbing the tech down to a price that people thought was low enough, so on the low end they didn't do as well, if you can call anything Apple did before the mini, "low end."

As many people on the boards have pointed out since the beginning of time, the correct plural of virus is viruses, not viri. It comes directly from Latin, but not all -us words in Latin are made plural by changing the ending to -i. It isn't done for virus probably because viri is the plural for vir, or man, from which the English word virile is derived. Because of the way it was used in Latin, there is no record of the plural of virus in that langauge, so we use our English method of making plural a word that ends in s, adding es. Ergo, Viruses.

If you were to start talking about viruses in Latin, where you certainly wouldn't use English rules, it still wouldn't be viri. You would probably just change the pronunciation or possibly write virera or virora. We can't be sure because rules in Latin are sometimes as broken and mangled as they are in English.

And the plural of fish is...fish...or fishes. It depends.

I absolutely want one, NOW. But I have a question. Does it have a Hemi?

The new 64 bit dual core processors will be around 2.3 Ghz and offer not much performance gain over the present 2.5 Ghz G5 dual cores in the PPC Quads.

Remember folks no Altivec in Intel processors, which means they may be quicker, but less productive on big jobs.

The G5 processor is still a monster chip and Intel is just catching up, so don't expect any great jumps in processing power over what you see today.

The only benefit in waiting for Intel PowerMac at this time would be the option to run Windows programs under Darwine at native speeds, I would also wait until the BlueRay DVD burner is ready because you'll only be able to buy one with a new Mac.

If your in the market now for a PowerMac, the Quad is the machine to get as it will run all present PPC software and future software with dual binaries.

http://appleintelfaq.com/

Also the Quad is fast enough to be able to process 1080p video without HDCP(TPA) copy protection hassards like your going to see in all future EFI based Mac's.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70349-0.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface

Jay:

A Hemi? Don't you mean a Hemus?

only if he wants two hemuses.

"We can't be sure because rules in Latin are sometimes as broken and mangled as they are in English."

I think, there4 I'm 5. I'm a virii.

Tiger has made little headway in the past year and that's up against XP from 2001. Now Vista ships this year with a bundled Media Center, all the eye candy, and security improvements. Not to mention the fact that it will come pre-installed on every consumer & business PC in the world. And you all get "speakers" and designer cases. What's Leopard again? Who cares.

Jay,

You don't have many friendi, do you?

Just kidding. I took a year of latin myself, and appreciated your refresher course.

Apple is really pissed me off.

I had to reset my viPod and download almost 60GB all over a lousy USB2 connection.

It's taking HOURS and HOURS!!

OH APPLE why has thou forsaken FIREWIRE?

Where is FIREWIRE 800 on MacBook Pro's?

Don't people realize USB2 is a inferior?

I guess this means Mac's will be just PC's.

Damm, still going.. and going...

*yawn* still going

*zzzzzzzz*

Conroe? I hope Apple is working on integrating Kentfield, which is the 4-core version. It would be sweet if the first Intel PowerMacs were a dual Kentfield monster with 8 cores of multi-processing power!

Applbites here is an interesting tidbit on the barefeats website.
http://www.barefeats.com/imcd.html

USB 2.0 is FASTER on the iMac Intel Core Duo than on the Quad-Core G5 Power Mac! One of our readers was pondering whether the speed of USB 2.0 might be improved on the Intel based Mac. So we ran some QuickBench tests using a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 and Wiebetech SuperDriveDock+ (USB2 + FW800). Here's what we observed:
Quad-Core built-in USB2 = 11MB/s READ, 11MB/s WRITE
Quad-Core with Aaxeon USB2 card = 15MB/s READ, 11MB/s WRITE
iMac Intel Core Duo 2.0 built-in USB2 = 18MB/s READ, 14MB/s WRITE
(of course, FireWire is faster)
iMac Intel Core Duo 2.0 built-in FW400 = 39MB/s READ, 28MB/s WRITE
Quad-Core built-in FW800 = 58MB/s READ, 50MB/s WRITE

Jake:

Both Conroe (Desktop) and Merom (Laptop) are 64bit cpus. It is sort of a shame that Apple released the iMac, Powerbook, and Mac Mini as 32bit since that means they will have to keep supporting them. x86-64 is much faster than x86 due to having more registers (4x more usable available) at its disposal among other things.

An interesting point I haven't seen answered is, Is Intel going to let their Desktop cpus be used in dual cpu systems? Since going to Xeon during the P3 time period Intel desktop cpus have not been able to be used in dual cpu setups. So it may not be until Kentsfield is released when Apple releases a PowerMac Quad replacement.

Plurality

A better example would be the plural for "deer", which is deer.
A deer or three deer, its all the same. Or moose.

Finally finished and now my external LaCie d2 fails to mount when it was working perfectly a few hours earlier.

Tried everything, pram and pmu reset.

power off and everything disconnected for 20 minutes

even used another Mac, nada


smashed the b*tch against the wall, they use

Western Digial Caviar SE
Enhanced IDE hard drives

WD is supposed to be the best


Computers $UK A$$, Apple is just conning us

There is no such thing as a truly personal computer.

I sympathise with Applebites, but I have never had any problems with my Lacies mounting.

I have an old 80 GB Lacie I bought back when I had a PMac G4 533, and I bought a 500 GB 18 mths ago when I upgraded to PMac Dual 2.0.

I guess I have always been lucky with my Apple equipment too, as I have never had any problems. I'm on my 4th Mac, so you've got to be realistic and expect somethin to go wrong some time. I look at buddies who use PC's and compare their myriad of problems, and I thank the gods I made the right decision way back when.

But I am not in any hurry to upgrade to intel macs - all my apps are up to date, so unless Leopard turns out not to run on my PMac, I'll be using it quite happily for another few years.

why the excitement? for years apple was saying how intel is crap and now they are moving to it and prazing it? omg!! more like a rip off.

ppc - Microsoft obviously cares - thats why Vista looks like a (aesthetically challenged) copy of Tiger.

Oh yeah...... 6 versions of Vista!!!!!!! ......... Why??

Prazing - Oh please! - praising.........

If Apple is moving to 86 processors then choose the best available, not just Intels. AMD currently has a dual core 64 bit processor in the Athlon 64 that runs up to 2.4ghz. Why can't Apple use any combination of 86 derivatives regardless of manufacturer. This Athlon has actually been around for a while and is still only at 130nm process so it has room to grow. HP has a host of Athlon based systems, and even Dell is thinking of moving there. Intel's stock is dropping while AMD's is rising. Intel reports disapointing forcasts while AMD reports continued growth. I get the feeling that everyone is moving away from Intel just as Apple is moving in.

shipwithsails,

i guess alot of people me included feel that wy too.

but apple couldnt really go with amd just yet. i dont think they wanted to risk another problem with supply.

once the transition is over and the bugs ironed out i think there could be a possibility for apple to have a build to order amd option, but that will be later on.

people can say what they like about apple moving because of DRM but i think it was as simple as needing chips for portables, laptops and the new wave of smaller products coming soon.

intel was the only choice really if this was the right reason for moving.

"Woodcrest," "Conroe." Why do all of the new intel chips sound like they're named after characters on "Hee Haw?!"

Conroe is alot faster than some of you think. A Quad Conroe will likely blow a quad G5 out the water.

A dual core AMD AthlonFX/Opteron 2.4Ghz already slaps a dual core G5 silly, and here the upcoming Conroe outperforms AMD's top of the line chip (2.6Ghz) that's overclocked to 2.8Ghz.

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2713

Of course, AMD has upcoming products up its sleeve as well. In retrospect Apple did make the right move to x86 chips as IBM's desktop chips simply lagged.

A quad G5 will be faster than a a quad Conroe, cuz "Conroe" sounds like a gay French waiter.

"G5" sounds manly.

Its obvious when you don't think about. If you think about it, you're gay. Or French. Or stoopid.

Gotta go now. Hannity and Colmes is on.

If a G5 is manly, wouldn't a G13 be a hell of a lot more manlier?

You can tell a PC user by the lack of a 'Universal Spell Checker'.

Mac users have no excuse for poor spelling.